Tag: braves

Can’t even think of a good post title to express how satisfying it is that the Dodgers got swept out of the playoffs

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ESPN: Milwaukee Brewers sweep Dodgers in the NLCS, advance to the World Series

First things first, congratulations to the Milwaukee Brewers for breaking through the glass ceiling and advancing to the World Series.  I would be totally fine with a Brewers championship, and at this point I don’t even care who wins the World Series between them, the Rays and the Indians Guardians who are still duking it out in the ALCS.  Because when the day is over, if I couldn’t have the Braves, then it really didn’t matter who won—as long as it wasn’t the Dodgers.

And no disrespect to the Brewers or the Rays or the Guardians, but this post really isn’t about them, it’s about the Dodgers, and the sheer power of satisfaction that is derived from hate, namely like most people who don’t reside in Southern California, the general dislike for the Dodgers; and the gargantuan horde of their fairweather soft-ass worst in baseball, fans with air quotes.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the last few weeks of playoff baseball, and yeah I don’t really care much for the Dodgers, and I don’t want to see them win and succeed and secure the vaunted three-peat that has eluded even the most dominant teams in baseball history.  But the thing is, I don’t really dislike a lot of their players, like should be the case whenever anyone says they don’t like a particular team.  Obviously it starts with Freddie Freeman, a guy I’m incapable of disliking, and then there’s Mookie Betts, who always comes off as charming, chill and an all-around cool guy.

Despite the fact that hater culture is supposed to dislike guys making insane amounts of money, I don’t harbor any genuine ill-will to Shohei Ohtani; yes he has changed the deferred money game with his $700 million deal, and he might have a poorly-hidden gambling problem, but he does play the game with an air of integrity and brings Japanese courtesy into the spotlight, that he remains a pretty likeable guy.  Even Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whom I was very skeptical of for receiving a ridiculous $300M deal before even throwing an MLB pitch has turned into one of the most talented pitchers in the game, and a complete Iceman once the playoffs come around.  In hindsight, he’s not only been absolutely worth every penny he’s been paid, he’s erring on the side of underpaid, considering just how good, how reliable and how many results he’s delivered.

I do have not nice feelings about guys like Blake Balakey Snell because I think he’s a money-grubbing spinster who only wants to play when it’s most critical, and I get this really negative vibe from Tarik Skubal and I hope he bounces in free agency although the Dodgers are always in play due to their penchant for creative contract structures.  And Max Muncy, I can’t stand, because as decent of a player he objectively is, on a team like the Dodgers, he’s still a fourth-tier contributor, but runs his mouth and acts bigger than he actually is and I like to see him fail, almost as satisfying as it was to see Snell take the L in the critical game 3 that was their true do-or-die night.

But the absolute most satisfying thing about the Dodgers not just losing to the Brewers, but getting swept, eliminated and sent packing to Cancun, is the sheer fact that all of their insufferable, shitty, fairweather fans, no longer have any reason to be happy anymore, and much like the team they act like they follow, their season is over.

Seriously, I’ve encountered fanbases in all variety of sports, and none of them are as bad as Dodgers fans.  I’m talking about Philadelphia sports fans, Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, Alabama fans, Miami Heat fans, San Francisco sports fans.  Awful, insufferable and terrible in their own ways, but none of them are bad as Dodgers fans. 

First, since most of them haven’t even been fans long enough to even remember who Clayton Kershaw is, much less Sandy Koufax or Fernando Valenzuela, they don’t actually know what it’s like to suffer the bad times of sports fandom and have no modicum of grit or toughness that comes from the passage of time of playing annual games of emotional attachment to our respective teams.  That said, they’re all soft, and have absolutely no ability to tolerate being in the crosshairs of all other sports fans, and resort to uncreative and weak retorts, often just going straight to personal attacking, which in the arena of talking shit on the internet is basically tantamount to waving a white flag.

They’re sore losers, and even more sore winners, and have a tendency to gloat and circle jerk at any of their successes, as if exploiting payroll policies as if they were playing baseball team management with a Game Genie attached to it.  They can’t handle any sort of criticism from fans of other bases, but their only real strength are their numbers that have the capability to overwhelm and flood out any shit talk that they can’t handle.

And much like the general vibe of Southern California living, they’re mostly comprised of flakey, douchey, attention-seeking, vapid, and under-sports-educated douche flakes.  The Algorithm feeding me clips of Dodgers fans reels and content felt like AI trolling, and I found myself getting so inundated by so much of their bullshit that I had to eventually start manually thumbs downing them so I could hopefully not see them any further.

Needless to say, this whole diatribe reinforces the notion that the vast majority of my general dislikes for certain sports teams, almost always stems from their fans, and the unfortunate fact that in this connected world with social media outlets, it’s nigh impossible to not be exposed to them in some fashion.  And over the last few years, with the rise of the Dodgers, their fans have absolutely launched themselves to the top of the mountain as being the absolute shittiest fans out there.

And seeing them all suffer, and knowing that their season with all their hopes and aspirations for the three-peat have all come to a brutal halt, is among the chief reasons why it’s so satisfying that the Dodgers lost.

I love that it came at a sweep, because few things in sport are more humiliating than getting swept.  Losing game 1 probably made all their shitty fans cry luck, fluke, we can still even things up tomorrow.  Losing game 2 brought more anxiety and concern, but there have been many examples in history where a team dropped 0-2 and still come back to win a best of seven.  But game 3 was the best, because it was started by Balakey Snell, he who played hardball with the league and got a fat 5/$182M deal with the Dodgers with their usual deferred payment plan bullshit, rode the train to a World Series last year, and pulled his usual loaf-in-first-half, start-trying-in-second-half this season, and still got knocked around in both of his starts in this year’s playoffs, when he was presumably in try-mode.

But as most baseball/sports fans know, falling 0-3 is basically the kiss of death, seeing as how outside of hockey, only one team in sports history has ever overcome 0-3, being the 2004 Boston Red Sox that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts also happened to play a pivotal role in.  Although probably nothing in sports history would be worse than the Dodgers overcoming an 0-3 deficit, math was most definitely not on their side.

I predicted that either the Brewers would win in a blowout, or the Dodgers would win game 4 by a slim margin, because they had to have been in full blown panic mode, all hands would be on deck, and survival was all that mattered, and in cases like that, either their gambles pay off, or they blow up in their faces, with no middle ground.

When Ohtani finally broke out of his annual playoff slump, with a grandiose three-run home run, I thought to myself, oh boy, here’s the catalyst for the improbably and inevitably insufferable comeback for the ages, but the Milwaukee Brewers of all teams in history, this 2026 edition, seemed to shrug it off, and began chipping away at the deficit, and by the time the 9th inning rolled around, had hung six unanswered runs, and were on the precipice of advancing to the World Series, but more importantly, sweeping the disliked Dodgers out of the playoffs and effectively saving the game of baseball, at least before it will more than likely go on strike after this season.

And the best part about the whole thing, is that this all happened at Dodger Stadium, and all their shitty fairweather fans who were mostly there because it’s just the cool thing to do in LA and don’t actually know shit about baseball, got to see this epic meltdown of expensive proportions, and got to take part in being on the wrong side of the decision that every sports fans that isn’t impressed by the Dodgers, was rooting for to happen.

Honestly, I think I can comfortably say that the Dodgers losing and getting bounced from the playoffs brings me more joy than if the Braves had won the NLCS and gone to the World Series.  That’s the power of sports hate.

At this point, I don’t even care who wins the World Series.  I think it would be a gasser, if the Brewers who swept and have to wait, lose all their momentum and go ice cold, while the ALCS maybe goes all seven games, and the 85-win Guardians emerge, and riding momentum, topples the Brew Crew, and we have another season of a shitty weak squad getting hot at the right moment, Cleveland’s sports curse is snapped, and then baseball goes on strike.  But as long as it’s not going to be the Dodgers hoisting the Commissioner’s trophy at the end, it’s all going to be good.

We have exorcised the demons

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MLB: Atlanta Braves defeat Philadelphia Phillies 6-2 in the decisive game 3 of the Wild Card Series, to advance to the NL Division Series

Well how ‘bout them apples?  With one win, the Braves exorcised numerous demons, from getting the Phillies monkey off their back, breaking the streak of Barves always get knocked out in the first round, as well another astute observations people have made leading up to the game, that the Barves always lose winner-take-all games.

Naturally, I had everything to do with this, seeing as how I haphazardly posted my requiem for the team in advance of the deciding game 3, with me genuinely, firmly believing that another elimination at the hands of the Phillies was all but inevitable.  Fate has a way of thinking that they have a sense of humor, and when it comes down to it, when I take a firm stance on something, I have to be proven wrong, regardless of if I’m inwardly pleased with the end result.  But my belief was clearly genuine and not artificially made up with the intention of tricking fate, because otherwise the Braves would have been the Barves last night, and lost.

That being said, I also realized that I needed to make a sacrifice in order to help the squad this year.  Back in 2021, I stated that I would buy a Dugout Mug, which I deemed to be the most useless product available in the entire free market, but then I also stated that should the Braves actually win the World Series, I would plunk down my own money and purchase one of these stupid pieces of shit, because sacrifice is necessary in order to hope to get something that I want. 

True to my word, when the Braves actually won the World Series, I plunked down $80 and got one.  It’s been used, maybe twice, because it’s not an ideal receptacle to drink from since it’s not really dishwasher safe because it’s fucking wood, and I have to imagine mixing wood with liquid too frequently, much less alcohol probably doesn’t help its longevity and if I paid $80 for this piece of shit, I may as well try to make it last, and be a reminder of the sacrifice I made to do my part in helping bring the World Series to Atlanta in 2021.

I could go ahead and do another Dugout Mug, but they literally have added no new merchandise in over five years, so I’m curious if they’re actually still in business and not just running some skeleton ghost site that doesn’t actually work, but I’ve decided that in the same vein of purchasing something stupid, is a waste of money and that nobody really asked for, I’ll go the record and declare that if the Braves go all the way this year, I will purchase these idiotic drink coasters, adorned with the box score diagram of key plays from the Braves’ 2021 playoff run.

I do feel that this is an adequate sacrifice to offer up to Fate, because my house already has a ton of coasters, because mythical wife grabs them up from all the various bars and places we’ve been to and they actually kind of are cool little souvenirs in their own right, but in most cases, they cost us no money, and here I am offering up a sacrifice that would eat into both my wallet, as well as consume space in the home where I have to fight tooth and nail in order to liberate a single inch from the audition of Hoarders: Buried Alive my fellow residents inflict upon our home.

It’s a lofty ask, seeing as how the Braves’ next opponents are MLB’s favorite team in history, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and seeing as how the Braves are not regarded enough to constantly get the woeful 2:30pm starts throughout the Wild Card series, it’ll be interesting to see what it’s like when the least regarded team in the playoffs is matched up against the most regarded team.

For the record, the Braves have gone 5-1 against the Dodgers throughout the season, along with a glorious sweep when they came to Atlanta, but the playoffs are a completely different beast, the team still has an anemic offense, and the Dodgers are simply a team constructed for championship caliber play.  Should the Braves manage to advance, they’d play either the Brewers or the Padres, and I would not get my hopes up too high against any team in the American League in spite of their generally unimpressive records, because the MLB playoffs are the ultimate crapshoot and it’s always a matter of what team gets hot and rides the momentum to the finish line.

That being said, my offer stands, if the Braves go all the way, I’ll plunk down $50 and get these dumb coasters, that I will resent existing in my home, but be fondly reminisced of how and why they made they way here.

Anyway, I’m not any more optimistic about their chances of going all the way, as I was going into a deciding game against the Phillies, but stranger things have happened in sports, and my offer of sacrifice is out there, and hopefully will be tempting enough for Fate to take me up on it.

A pre-requiem for the 2026 Atlanta Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After Dylan Lee gave up two straight homers almost immediately after the Braves had clawed and scratched their way to a 3-1 lead going into the 8th inning, I immediately saw the writing on the wall.  As Braves fans, we’ve all seen this script before, and from this point on, it was just clenching and hoping the brutal cycle of abuse that comes with being a Braves fan would come to an end, but not be willing to put any money on it that it would happen today. 

Two innings later, the Phillies win game 2, and we’re headed to the winner-take-all game 3, later tonight.  The only series out of the four wild card matchups to have to go the distance, as the White Sox, Yankees and Padres all took care of business and won two immediate games to advance to the divisional series.

Over the last 14 hours or so, I’ve had a lot of thoughts swirling in my brain, that I knew I wanted to write something about it, but wasn’t sure what angle to triangulate on and what tone to take when doing it.  Do I try and tempt fate and write something scathing and completely doom-and-gloom about the Braves’ chances tonight with hopes that I will be proven wrong, and that they’ll hang a 12-2 clobbering just so I’ll be made to look stupid but still be happy that they won?  Do I preemptively write out the post I had formulating in my head about how Philadelphia sports seem to solely exist to ruin the hopes and dreams of Atlanta sports, based on just how many times Philadelphia teams have eliminated Atlanta teams in postseason play throughout history?  Do I make an itemized list of Barves postseason failures over history?

I don’t know.  But I wanted to write something, before game 3, because, well, I don’t know why.  It’s like just my way of processing things, and maybe a combination of all of the above.  Writing something about the Braves becoming the Barves in October on an annual basis just is something that I’m compelled to do, and I hope for the best, but am prepared for the worst.

The fact that all three other matchups concluded means that for once, the Braves don’t have to play at 2 pm, and get a prime-time game that starts at around 8 or so, so more eyes can watch as the Braves will probably choke and lose to the Phillies in the playoffs, so that they will be 0-4 against them historically, with three eliminations over the span of the last five years.

It doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled the Phillies in the regular seasons throughout all these seasons, the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, they just can’t seem to overcome them in the playoffs.  2022 was particularly brutal, because the Braves had 101 wins and played most of the year as the de-facto best team in the league, but they took their foot off the gas going the playoffs, had a bye, and immediately got smoked by the 87-win Phillies.  In fact, when the Braves drop to the Phillies tonight, they will have done so as the higher seed in three-straight eliminations, adding insult to injury, and at this point there’s really nothing more that can be said about the agony of constantly falling short to a common tormentor.

Dylan Lee, is a guy I hope I do not see again tonight, and if by some miraculous act of god they win and advance, is a guy I hope I don’t see again for the remainder of the playoffs, and frankly on this team ever again.  It’s nothing personal, but after his game 2 performance, that should be the nail in the coffin as far as his favor with any Braves fan should be.  Every now and then, we see the eventual winner of the World Series do some wonky things with the bullpen, and usually there are some guys who lose favor and are sparsely seen, no matter what their role was in the regular season and the journey to get to the playoffs.  Craig Kimbrel, in spite of his success as a closer was this guy for Boston in one notable year, and the Dodgers completely replaced all their back-end relief with Roki Sasaki just last year.  Dylan Lee, I hope, is the guy that Braves fans never see again, regardless of any positive contributions he may have had in the past.

In all likelihood, the Phillies will be starting Zack Wheeler, their ace, on short rest, which just adds to the feeling of dread for Braves fans.  The Braves used their two best in games 1 and 2, and got away with a split, and the Phillies, out of necessity couldn’t use Wheeler until tonight, but as it stands, we have Wheeler versus whatever the Braves have left.  Most likely Grant Holmes, who has been a fifth-starter type who has been inconsistent and does not inspire faith going into a deciding elimination game.

Needless to say, take everything all of the above, and I do not have a good feeling about tonight’s outcome.  I want to be wrong more than anything, and this is an instance where being right would bring no joy, other than to be able to sigh and say, welp, at least I was right.  The Braves’ offense is still anemic and has never been fixed at any point in the season, and has relied tremendously on the strength of their pitching, but you can’t win games if you don’t score runs. 

Wheeler will either be lights out, or succumb to the rigors of working on short rest, but knowing the Braves’ bats, I’d wager on the former, and I think the chances are way higher that we have same shit, different year, with the Braves going out in the first round, regardless of the fact that MLB added an even first-er round to the playoff field with the Wild Card – if the Braves make the playoffs, they’re destined to get bounced in whatever round comes first to them, because I’m not, and I can’t have any more kids, so I can’t produce any more babies to bless them with any more baby luck.

This shouldn’t be eating at me this much, seeing as how lackadaisical of a baseball fan I’ve been over the last decade or so, but I guess that’s the nature of being a sports fan and a fan of a team.  No matter how much you try to not let it affect you, it just does.

Prove me wrong, fate.

Baseball is the best

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I’m a pretty casual fan these days that isn’t nearly in the trenches of the minutiae of the game like I once was, this turned out to be a pretty interesting final day of the MLB regular season, that I took more notice of a lot of concurrent storylines than I probably had at any other point in the season, probably over the last few too.

So, starting with the Braves, seeing as how they had clinched the NL East last week, this final week of the season was full of games where the outcomes were basically inconsequential, but in fitting Barves fashion, Atlanta had to go 2-4 and end the season with a loss, backing into the playoffs.  Inconsequential as these last games might have been, I’m a firm believer of momentum and routine, and seeing as how the team won 92 games by playing in a certain fashion, I never like the idea of changing the way they play the game and letting off the gas, when, especially in baseball, the team that gets hot in the playoffs usually is the one that wins it all, completely regardless of records, seeding and bracket positioning.

Frankly, I don’t like the Braves’ chances in the playoffs, seeing as how for most of the second half of the season, the offense has been pretty anemic, where the wins have been mostly on the arm of Chris Sale, blowout wins were sparse, and every victory felt like they were coming from behind, instead of putting opponents away early and cruising to any low-stress wins.

There were a handful of games today that I had hopes for the outcome, and almost systematically, nearly every single one of them went contrary to what I was hoping for:

  • Wanted Phillies to lose to Rays (Phillies won)
  • Wanted Diamondbacks to beat Padres (Dbacks lost)
  • Wanted Angels to lose to Mariners (they did)
  • Wanted Astros to lose to Athletics (Astros won)
  • Wanted Rangers to lose to Twins (they did)

Getting all five would’ve been a tall order, but two out of five still kind of stinks, and there were particular reasons where I was hoping for each of these outcomes.

With the Phillies and Diamondbacks outcomes the way they happened, means that the sixth and final playoff spot in the National League belongs to the Phillies, who will play the Braves in the Wild Card round, three games in Atlanta.

I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that I have a complex about more than the Phillies, because they’ve probably been the biggest thorn in the side to the Braves for as long as I’ve been a fan.  Philadelphia sports in general, it’s my belief that all Atlanta sports fans should have a similar complex about, seeing as how the Phillies and Eagles have tormented the Braves and Falcons for decades at this point, and it always seems like they’re the ones who send Atlanta home in the playoffs.

Historically, the Phillies are 3-0 against the Braves in the playoff series, having knocked them out in 1993, 2022 and 2023; and its worth mentioning the Phillies were the lower seed in the last two, and it really doesn’t matter how well the Braves have handled them in the regular seasons, there’s just something about the playoffs where the Phillies rise up harder against the Braves than anyone else, before dropping like flies immediately after dispatching of the Braves.

Needless to say, I’m disappointed that the Phillies have snuck into the playoffs, and even more disappointed that they matched up against the Braves.  I genuinely would have rather have seen the Cubs or Padres over the Phillies, and I don’t have a good feeling about this year either.

The Angels’ loss today meant that for the first time in franchise history, the Angels have lost 100 games, and is generally meaningless it is to me, I always like to see ironic historical marks, and seeing as how the Braves have never dropped 100 in my tenure as fan, I’m amused to see it happened to someone else.

Now the Astros and Rangers, the only reason why I cared about their games, was the fact that speaking of ironic history, 2026 would mark the first time in history where a division winner would be have a no better than .500 record, and few things seem as amusing as the idea of a baseball team marching into the playoffs with barely 80 wins, when the Brewers and Dodgers both have 100+.

If both the Astros and the Rangers lost today, they would have ended with identical 80-82 records, with the Astros winning the division based on a tiebreaker, and we’d be witness to the first-ever sub-.500 division winner.

Unfortunately, the Astros pulled out a W against the also woeful Oakland Athletics, and finish 81-81, a cool .500, breaking the previous mark of futility of the 2005 Padres and their 82-80 record.  I’m disappointed, because .500 is still .500 and isn’t as ironically entertaining as .494 and firmly under .500.

That being said, after the Braves get bounced by the Phillies, I think I’m going to have to root for the Astros to go all the way, because few things would be great in baseball than an 81-win team going all the way, before the whole league goes on strike, and the last World Series champion of this era being a shitty 81-win Houston Astros, whom everyone already hates their franchise because of the cheating scandal of 2017.

So with the Astros in, the American League playoff bracket is something that of a slow-adult dreamed up, where an 81-win Astros get the #3 seed by virtue of winning a pitiful AL West going up against an 83-win #6 seed White Sox, where the winner of series gets go play against an 85-win Guardians squad that actually won the AL Central.

Meanwhile, on the other branch of the bracket, a 93-win Yankees squad goes up against an 87-win Red Sox squad, where the winner gets to play a 97-win Rays squad, where if you’re paying attention, all of them are in the same division, and because there’s no re-seeding after the Wild Card round, the #1 seed in the AL has to play a stronger squad in the divisional round, and it’s guaranteed that at least one sub-90 win squad is going to be in the ALCS, and keep hopes for a World Series alive.

But let’s end this post about baseball on a high note, which was the emotional Detroit Tigers game, which was the final game of future Hall of Famer, Justin Verlander, the pride of Goochland (Virginia).  I always love when professional athletes go out on their own terms, and I’m happy for Verlander doing the same, instead of milking it longer in order to pursue 300 wins (retiring with 266).  It’s not like he has anything left to prove at this point otherwise, seeing as how he’s already got two World Series rings, three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, 3,500+ strikeouts, three no-hitters, and countless all-star selections.

He goes out in a beautiful game where he’s joined by his kids with his supermodel wife Kate Upton, and I think the best part about the game was in his final inning, where legendary-bad umpire, and also-in his final game ever, Laz Diaz completely capitalizes on the Pirates’ running out of ABS challenges, and makes some hilariously bad calls in order for Verlander to end his final outing with a strikeout.

It’s been a fun regular season, but as we all know, the playoffs are a completely different animal, so let’s close out the regular season with reminders of just how awesome baseball is still capable of being.

lol, suck it LA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Atlanta Braves pitcher Chris Sale pitches complete game shutout to finish sweep of the Dodgers, winning 1-0

These days it’s not often where a baseball game is so good it inspires me to want to write about it, but here we are.

Despite being the worst baseball fan in the world, I know I still care enough about the Braves to where I try not to be on too much social media during games, because I don’t want to be spoiled by the scores of any games in progress.  Long gone are the days where the fate of my mood depends on the wins and losses of the team, but it still brings me ten seconds of disappointment whenever they lose, especially to teams that they probably shouldn’t be losing to, especially when it’s a period of struggle and the offense is not producing, costing Chris Sale a near countless amount of wins despite his prolonged pitching excellence.

I knew enough to know that this current stretch of games that they were in was going to be the gauntlet that would make or break the season, seeing as how their opponents would the first-place Brewers and the first-place Dodgers, with a make-up game also in there against the White Sox who were also in first place at the time of their game. 

Naturally, the Braves would start their last road trip, getting swept by the underwhelming Twins, before going into the stretch of 7 games against first place squads, where they somehow won an ugly affair against the White Sox, before dropping two to the Brewers, salvaging a win in neutral ground Williamsport for the Little League Classic, and it was back home for three straight against the defending champion Dodgers.

Obviously, not much needs to be said about the importance of competing against the big bad evil spending Dodgers, and considering how much the Braves had squandered their division lead, there was a mathematical chance that the Braves could have completely lost the lead outright with a poor performance against Los Angeles.

But because baseball is a mysterious game, not only did the Braves go toe-to-toe with the Dodgers, they fucking swept them, taking all three games, in competitive fashion.  Game 1 was led by the oft-criticized and polarizing Bryce Elder, who turned in his 15th quality start of the season, keeping the Dodgers mostly neutralized for six innings, en route to winning the series opener.

Game 2 was also tighter than a Korean person’s wallet, as the game went into the 9th inning deadlocked at 5-5.  And of all the guys in the world to hit a walk-off winner, it would be the much maligned Kim Ha-Seong, who smacked the critical base hit that would win the game for the Braves, and I’d like to take credit for this happening, because I just recently wrote about his season’s woes, wrote him off as someone who’s MLB career is pretty much over, and the Braves would have been better off eating his salary and cutting him loose in order to preserve his roster spot.

Yeah, this guy just had to be the one to hit a game winner against the big bad Dodgers, that effectively took the series, and put the most hated team in the game on the brink of getting swept.

And then Chris Sale in game 3, pitches an ultimate statement game, going all nine innings in an era where people give standing ovations for starters who can muddle through five.  But Sale goes truly old school, notching the progressively harder to get and rarer CGSHO stat with his truly marvelous 11 strikeout performance, completely dominating the Dodgers.

Sale had been on somewhat of a streak of terrible luck, where he’d been pitching lights out baseball over his last few starts, but because the offense has continuously gone completely inept during those starts, he’s still been tagged with losses on his record.  And as incredible and boner-popping his performance was tonight, the fact of the matter still remains one-run of support is still pitiful, and a guy like Sale absolutely deserves better than the support he’s been getting.

But back to the game, it really was a marvel of a game, because the game effectively ended in the first inning.  After Sale got out of the first with no damage, Drake Baldwin swings at the very first pitch thrown by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, crushes a home run that makes the game 1-0, and then it was pretty much nothing but pitching for the whole rest of the night.

I love 1-0 games like this, because the opponent has all night long thinking, ok all we need is one and it’s a brand new game, but then as the innings progressively advance, there’s less and less time, and suddenly that 1-0 score ends up becoming an mountain that can no longer be surmounted.  But the fact that Baldwin homered on the very first pitch of the game, off of a guy as talented as Yamamoto, this is the shit that I absolutely live for.

When the dust settled, the Braves have completed arguably their most challenging stretch of the season, winning 5/7 games against first-place squads.  It figures that stretching the parameters back further, things look worse, because for whatever reason, the Braves get swept by the fucking Twins, and lose 2/3 to the Diamondbacks, but that’s baseball in a nutshell, and why the games are still played.  The division lead remains intact, and with seven remaining against the chasing Phillies, it’s going to be an interesting race to October.

Regardless, this night stands out, and I can safely say that this is probably going to be the regular season game of the year for Braves Country.  Chris Sale throwing a complete game shutout against the hated Dodgers, statistical anomaly of first pitch homer being the only scoring of the game, and even Kim Ha-Seong got another hit tonight.  As the old saying goes, how can you not be romantic about baseball?

But of course, the Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BaseballWRLD: Braves’ shortstop Kim Ha-Seong is statistically basically having the worst baseball season in history

I really hate that it’s a Korean player, on the Atlanta Braves, that is having this unfortunate distinction, but the proof is in the pudding and the numbers don’t lie.  I know that all over the internet, there are couch statisticians and homers who are going to cry that ~85 plate appearances is too small a sample to make this kind of judgment, but those individuals probably aren’t really seeing the bigger picture, nor have they actually watched any Braves games in which Kim has actually been in this season.

Man has been the very definition of a free agent flop, and one more thing that sucks about this whole thing is that this is the kind of free agent signing example that will further make the Atlanta Braves corporation even more gun-shy and risk-averse skittish about free agent signings in the future, than they already are.  One-year pacts are pretty low-risk as they come, albeit at high price tags, but considering the return on investment Kim has provided, or didn’t, the $20M he is making in the 2026 season has been particularly brutal.

Like with most Korean players in MLB, I supported Kim and have been such, even when he signed with San Diego and was playing out there.  I was proud of the guy when he was putting up 5+ bWAR seasons for the Padres, with him being so good in 2023 he was even notching some low-end MVP votes and a Gold Glove. 

Injuries derailed his time in San Diego, and he was shipped off to Tampa Bay where he couldn’t ever get back on track, and I was really excited when the Rays made him available and the Braves being the Braves did the Braves-iest thing and managed to buy low on him, picking him up at the waiver-deadline last year, which is the second trade deadline, the one nobody ever talks about, because that’s the one that’s like C-rated CDOs and there’s rarely any notable talent ever exchanged.

And that initial gamble paid off, and fed into my hypothesis of how much playing environment matters, with Kim’s numbers improving noticeably going from Tampa to Atlanta.  It’s like going from sleepy Tampa with white trash and no Korean community to Atlanta, that sure, still has its share of white trash, but has a robust Korean community mattered, and across the board his counting stats all improved in roughly the same amount of plate appearances.

The union proved to be mutually beneficial enough to where the Braves actually spent money and spent money on a Scott Boras client, two things that the organization normally hasn’t done a lot of historically, but it was a good opportunity for the Braves to get a reliable shortstop, and a good opportunity for Kim to possibly flex a season of being healthy and playing in a good environment, which he could then hope to parlay into a larger, more lucrative deal, likely away from Atlanta afterward.

But then he just had to go to Korea in the offseason, where the winters can be brutal, he slipped on some ice and fell and fucked up his hand, and before even reporting to Spring Training, the Kim deal had already begun to go tits up.  He missed all of Spring Training, and it’s evident that the lack of preparation put him in a miserable place to play catchup with, and when he returned to the Major League squad, he was joining the team that was contending and facing real pressure, and Kim just couldn’t get going.  He was a black hole in the lineup, and it went from it’s too early to tell to okay, maybe he does suck now.

A setback that put him on the disabled list was kind of a convenient excuse to remove him from the roster and start getting some production from other players, and fans began to bemoan his inevitable return, because the Braves being the Braves always demand ROI, and they would undoubtedly be determined to recoup anything at all from the $20M they were paying him.

He hit well in his rehab assignment, which the team was milking to the absolute maximum to keep him out of the Majors, but when push came to shove and they were forced to bring him back up, they did the predictable thing and brought him back up, while releasing one of the guys who was filling in for him, and doing it better than he was.

But the fact that Kim can’t hit Major League pitching goes to show that this is probably where he realistically is now, as a player.  Capable of doing well against Triple-A talent, but unable to be competent in the Majors.  As much as I support Kim personally, the reality is that his MLB career is more than likely done after this season, and he’ll probably go back to Korea to where he can hopefully salvage a lucrative career out in the KBO.

Regardless, we’re back to square one, where Kim is still sucking, and sucking to the magnitude of being on track to having the literal worst offensive season in MLB history, no hyperbole.  bWAR is kind of a catch-all statistic, loosely used to measure player worth, and Kim is currently sitting on -1.0 bWAR, which doesn’t sound like that much considering there are guys with worse, but it’s the fact that he’s gotten there in much shorter time that shows just how bad and detrimental he has been. 

Google estimates the cost of one bWAR in 2026 is roughly $11M, so the fact that Kim is sitting on -1.0 bWAR, and is getting paid $20M to get there, his financial impact to the organization is -$31M dollars.  That’s nearly two not-retired Prince Fielder seasons, but the difference is that Fielder wasn’t in the dugout adversely affecting a batting lineup, or on the field being fat, immobile and hurting the team defensively.

Most anyone with a brain knows that at some point, the roster spot is more valuable than a bad asset, and the smart play would have been cut Kim, eat the $20M, and to have kept Jorge Mateo, who at the time I’m writing this, had contributed +0.7 bWAR to the Braves before he was ungratefully released.  But like I said, the Braves are so corporate and so predictable, that everyone unfortunately knew that they were going to keep Kim and demand to get any modicum of ROI.

Again, I hate that this is happening to Kim, because this will undoubtedly make the baseball public continue to question Korean baseball players while still fetishizing Japanese ones, and I hate that it’s happening to the Braves. This will further cloud their willingness to use the free agent market, and I’m not going to hold my breath that I’ll ever see a day where there’s a standout Korean player on the Braves.

When the inevitable day comes where the Braves are bounced from the playoffs, many are going to be pointing their fingers at Kim, who sure, isn’t undeserving of it, but the team is also culpable for keeping him, when more optimally strategic options were available the whole time, due to their obsession with ROI and getting their money’s worth clouding optimal strategy.  That part, wouldn’t be on Kim.

Braves Job Alert: mid-tier Latino pitchers pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I saw a news article about how a former Atlanta Braves pitcher, Carlos Carrasco, had signed with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization.  This tingled my spider-senses because it was about baseball, it was about a guy who had been on the Braves, it was about Korea, it was about the KBO, where I had just seen a game for the first time, and it also just so happened to have featured the LG Twins; who lost to the Doosan Bears in spite of being the team with the better record when they play, but hey that’s why the play the games.

Anyway, in spite of my general ambivalence and distance from the Braves and just sports in general, I am familiar with Carlos Carrasco, because he was a guy on the team that it seemed to be notorious that he was cut from the major league roster pretty much every other week, before being re-signed by the Braves, pitch in a game or two, before being designated for assignment again, and the cycle would repeat itself, seemingly over and over again.

That’s not the kind of distinction any player should want, but for a bad sports fan like me who is more often times fascinated by the weird and interesting happenstances of sports, it’s how I remembered who he was.

It was in the 2025 season that I first noticed the pattern of Carrasco being jerked around, because it seemed to happen a lot, way more than I’d noticed it happening to any player before.  I mean, Uncle Jesse Chavez got a similar treatment in prior years, especially by the Braves, but not to the frequency in which it was happening to Carrasco.

According to Gemini, Carrasco’s 2025 season actually was, the most extreme case of revolving door roster ping-ponging for any player in history, as the poor guy was released and brought back an unprecedented seven times throughout the season. 

My knee-jerk reaction was that this had to have been related to the cheap-ass Braves wanting to save money and that the small gaps in between his cuts and re-signings, they’d be absolved of having to pay prorated daily wages, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how contracts work and that he was still due his contracted amount, and that his roster spot was more valuable and the chief reason for constantly shuffling him around. 

But at the same time, I don’t think the cheap-ass Braves’ payroll department was complaining about the lack of logistics and per-diem envelopes they were saving by the occasional absence of his physical being, so fuck those cheap bean counters all the same.

But the thing is, and I touched on it a second ago, with Jesse Chavez getting a similar treatment before Carrasco, is that I’ve come to the scientifically proven conclusion* that the Atlanta Braves seem to require the need to have a Latino pitcher of the mediocre, swingman variety, that they will jerk around back and forth on the roster and give them absolutely no chance to breathe, settle in, or genuinely feel like a part of the team.

*As much as I don’t want to have to explain that this is tongue-in-cheek, and that I have zero readers, I’ve been dealing with a lot of astonishingly stupid people on the internet and that’s my bad for engaging communities in the first place

So, it started, or rather I actually noticed this, in 2024, with the aforementioned Jesse Chavez; the man was already beloved in Atlanta, and prior to 2024, already had four prior stints with the Braves, including being a member of the 2021 World Series squad.  But after his championship contributions, the team didn’t get caught up in recency bias, let him walk, and he signed with the Cubs in 2022, where he did not start well, and in April, was traded back to the Braves, where he suddenly turned back into good Uncle Jesse, and pitched so well that the team was able to sell high on him and traded him to the Angels that August.  Apparently, changing out of his Braves uni made him suck again, and not even a full month later, the Angels cut him, and take a guess who was waiting to pick him back up?  The Braves.  Naturally, he pitched well for Atlanta again, and there was a funny narrative that was born about how he sucked for everyone except the Braves.

Uncle Jesse would sign and stay with the Braves for the entire 2023 season, and because he was on the Braves, he pitched well, enough to where he parlayed it into signing with the White Sox for more money the following season.  He bombed out in Spring Training and the Sox were forced to cut him, and naturally the Braves would pick him back up, and with someone else picking up half of his salary, would deliver again.  And then he’d sign with the Texas Rangers, suck, and of course the Braves would snatch him up again.

Which brings us to the 2025 season, where at 41, the magic was wearing off, and even in the magical Braves uni that gave him so much strength in the past, Chavez had become the next victim to the undefeated Father Time, his ERA ballooned up to 9.00, and the revolving door roller coaster began.  Two times he was cut and picked back up, with the second one of those he wasn’t even used, but it was at his third cut on July 17, 2025 that Chavez would declare his retirement from the game outright.

And on July 31, 2025, Carlos Carrasco was called up from the minor leagues.  I don’t know if he realized it, but he was basically going to be filling the void that Jesse Chavez had left behind, and he would remain on the squad for two weeks before getting his first cut, and then be brought back to finish out the season, literally one day later.

November 6, 2025, Carrasco would be cut by the Braves which is funny because the season was already over, but this would effectively be start of the 2026 season, where he would be about to make history:

11.06.25: cut by Braves (1)
11.08.25: signed by Braves
04.30.26: cut by Braves (2)
05.01.26: signed by Braves
05.07.26: cut by Braves (3)
05.08.26: signed by Braves
05.31.26: cut by Braves (4)
06.02.26: signed by Braves
06.12.26: cut by Braves (5)
06.15.26: signed by Braves
06.26.26: cut by Braves (6)
07.05.26: signed by Braves
07.09.26: cut by Braves (7)
07.22.26: signed by LG Twins

The scary thing is that this was just half of the season.  Imagine how many more times Carrasco would have ping-ponged in the months of July and August alone, before September call-ups would have probably done him in.

My knee-jerk reaction was naturally of amusement, and how Carrasco was probably thrilled to be getting a steady paycheck and probably have a consistent locker to use for the remainder of the 2026 season, even if he had to pack all his shit and go to Korea.  But the results speak for themselves, in his first start, Carrasco pitched seven perfect innings against the Doosan Bears, setting himself up to look like a demigod in Korea after being a training dummy in MLB.

Which brings us to the third guy in the picture above, Elieser Hernandez.  He’s no spring chicken at 31 years of age, and his MLB experience is nothing to sign about, having around 300 innings over six years of MLB experience, pitching in a variety of roles.  His career ERA was 5.10 prior to coming to the Braves. 

However, with the departure of Carrasco, Hernandez was called up on July 19, 2026, and he made his presence felt for Braves fans when he came out of the bullpen in a slugfest with the Baltimore Orioles on July 24, 2026, and pitched three innings of one-hit ball, getting the win.

He was promptly rewarded for his heroics by getting cut by the Braves on July 27, 2026, but he would re-sign with the team one day later.  Three days after that, he’d pitch three innings in a win against the Washington Nationals, notching an old-school three inning save, and I’m sure there’s some obscure stat where Elieser Hernandez is the first guy in MLB history to have his first two appearances with a team getting a Win and a Save, with a DFA in between.

Guess what happened two days ago?
August 3, 2026: Elieser Hernandez released by the Braves.

But then guess what happened one day ago?
August 4, 2026: Elieser Hernandez signed by the Braves.

Obviously the game is different now than it was five, ten, and twenty years ago.  Roster management is more important than it’s ever been, especially for poor teams and crying-poor teams who need to maximize their processes and efficiencies as optimally as possible to hope to have a prayer at competing against the Dodgers and their billion-dollar payroll of superstars that don’t have to be micromanaged.

And I’d be naïve if I didn’t assume that this is the kind of behavior that every team does to a degree, and that it’s not just the cheap-ass Braves doing it.  But it funny to conclude with the narrative that the Atlanta Braves have this mandatory requirement to have a Latino pitcher to be repeatedly spinning through the ringer, cutting and re-signing over and over again, and frankly it’s probably this kind of front office bullshit that will surely be a bullet point of contention this off-season when the owners and MLB players union embark on their collision course for next season’s inevitable strike.